One of the few blog postings I’m likely to make this week, as I get stuff together. While scouring the Web for nice styles to kidnap and mutate for my own eclexysian ends, I came across a very well-put little post over at Ex Cathedra, where the point is made that the RIAA cartel of today is comparable to nothing more than to the sheet music publishers of yesteryear. The difference, however, is that Boosey & Hawkes is still in business, while I don’t imagine that BMG will still be around in any form like the present in, say, the …
Category: REVIEWS
Worst Music Ever
Last week’s Friday Five was once again mine. One of my fondest memories from high school was going over to the home of this idiot we knew named Chris. We used to go to his house, which was on an acreage outside of the city, mostly to poke fun at him, do nasty things to his house while his mother wasn’t home, and watch the stars flat on our backs on his driveway. Chris lived with his mother and between them they shared the most godawful music collection that I’ve ever had the misfortune of looking at. I’m talking Milli …
Practical
Yeah, it’s a spoonerism. I’m about to leave to have a little run-through with the Dabang Band. They’re having a farewell show at the local foreigner bar and Thai, who I hung out with last night, asked me to sit in on a few of the old tunes. Though I haven’t played with them, or even at all, since last November, I think it’ll be fun, and I’m happy about it. What I’m not happy about is playing on a new reed… but all the old ones have been sitting for something like nine months. If a baby can gestate …
Yeah, you heard me. Free.
Want some free, legal MP3s? Live shows by all kinds of bands who don’t object to bootlegs? Look no further than here. Via a review at Blogcritics.org from way back when…
A Sorry Moment
There’s a musician out there, somewhere, who I used to have a little more respect for. I quite like some of his older, harder-to-get recordings, and I was researching online how I could get a copy of one when, of course, I found his website. Now, what do you think it was that made me lose respect for him? Was it shameless self-promotion? Nah, there wasn’t too much of that, considering he makes his living playing music. Was it rants about other musicians? No, because he was generally pretty nice in everything he said and his criticisms were more general …
What The Hell’s The Deal With Ian McDonald’s River of Gods?
The book’s been highly praised, widely reviewed, and yet most of the bookshops I checked for it at (in Canada) had never even had it in stock at any point in time. Moreover, now that I’m asking an excellent book order service about it here, I’m told that it’s actually out of print! How can such a good book already have gone out of print? It’s insane. Well, maybe they’re changing the rights or reprinting it or something? Oh, wait: no, it’s just that the release in the states is simply years behind the release elsewhere, according to the author’s …
Be Careful What War of the Worlds You Wish For
Well, there I was just a few days ago lamenting the fact that Spielberg chose to “adapt” Wells’ The War of the Worlds to the 21st century, and that he’d not done a period piece. And then I found a link on White Screen of Despair to a period production of the film (take your pick of trailer here). Uh, it’s even more unfortunate than the Spielberg version, sad to say. But on the bright side, one of the many books I brought back with me during my travels was a hardcover edition of Kevin J. Anderson’s 1996 anthology War …
Movies
I’m not going to go into deep commentary, but will touch upon a few movies I’ve seen lately: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy: 4 stars out of 5. Not as bad as the worst reviews claimed, but nowhere near as good as the books or the bits of the radio plays that I’ve heard before. The War of the Worlds: 3 stars out of 5. Sorry, but if it were set in a Victorian or Edwardian milieu, this movie would have been wonderful. Set in the present, it was just… anachronistic. Aliens that can travel across intergalactic space, set …
A Steaming Pile of Sith
A friend of mine sent me this link as the last word on Star Wars Episode III. Despite so many of my fellow SF-geek friends liking it, well, or at least liking it well-enough, I sat in the theater, yes, watching it, knowing it would be utter trash, and thinking to myself, “Why didn’t they spend the money making ____ instead?” I know why, of course: they knew Star Wars III (which is in all reality Star Wars VI) would make piles more money, even if it was trash. Never mind that The Forever War would make a much better …
Pini Blog
If the names Richard and Wendy Pini don’t ring a bell, you probably won’t need to follow this link; if the names are familiar, yes, they have a blog. And they’re still working on stories set in the same world. (Not my kind of thing, but I suppose some people liked it, and I guess I did for a short stretch as a kid.) I tell you, sooner or later everyone will have a blog. Everyone. Including you, if you don’t yet have one.